Here are some ideas for a child who asks how everything works.

Do you have a child who tinkers with everything?

One that pulls everything apart and tries to put it back together or is constantly asking, “how does that work?” Our youngest son is obsessed with tinkering. I got so frustrated with him taking everything apart, that I decided to go out to the thrift store and buy bags of electronics and old broken items so he could intentionally take them apart and try them out.

A tinkerer with a coding mind…

We now have old answering machines, watches, clocks etc. strewn about the house in various forms of disassembly. Some blinking, talking or beeping. It’s funny and we don’t mind because unbeknownst to our youngest son, we are informally teaching him something. It’s okay to tinker and learn.

However, we didn’t truly understand just how mechanical and engineer-oriented our son was until we came across him creating coding designs in his video games. That’s when we got serious and more intentional. We started him on the Coding for Kids and it’s the best decision we made. He’s learning and becoming more motivated to do something that shows results and excites him.

Coding is the way of the present and future….

In a technology-oriented world, a little intro to coding doesn’t hurt. It teaches a new skill, a different way of thinking and it presents opportunities for a child to find something that interests them. There are so many job opportunities that involve coding. Anything from web design to game creation and more. Everything we use these days has a form of coding in it. It may be Python, CSS, C++ or more. There are dozens and dozens of coding languages out there, but after we did our research we found some books that are great introductions with kid-friendly formats.

HTML & CSS design and build websites by Jon Duckett

Get Coding- Learn HTML, CSS and Javascript by Candlewick Press

These affordable and simple beginner coding books are a great way to teach your child a new skill and see if it elicits a deeper interest.

For our eldest child, he enjoys the coding but finds it tedious and so we only have him working through a few books and then he will be done. For our youngest, he naturally gravitated towards code so he found these books interesting, intriguing and was excited to see a concrete results. These books are definitely worth trying, especially if you have a child who finds interest in tinkering, mechanical interests and more.

Once you go through these books or even as you go through these, note there are many websites out there with free code applications or downloads that are fun and user-friendly. We found many of the apps to be helpful to go alongside these books.

Here are just a few websites/app suggestions to get started:

• HTML Cheat Sheet
• Code Studio
• Droidscript
• Scratch / Scratch Jr (app on mobile)

Our 7 year old son found these on his own based on the books/resources he was learning so I am guessing that if he likes them, they are kid-approved! Happy coding!